Performance wasn't great but it was playable, so I decided to overclock my GPU. I spent a few hours tweaking settings until I got an impressive score on Geekbench 4's Compute Benchmark, so I restarted my PC, ran the test again and the score was around the same. Being satisfied I ran Rise of the Tomb Raider and began the benchmark.

The FPS was EXACTLY the same as before the OC. So I closed RotTR and ran Geekbench again, only to see that the score was the same as before the OC too. I opened MSI Afterburner and checked to see if the settings were the same, and they were and I now do not know why the benchmark scores for RotTR and Geekbench were the same as before the OC.

I think it might have something to do with some sort of OCP (Over - Current Protection).

Not really, many games on the PC do not take advantage of multiple CPU cores effectively. Notice in Best CPUs of 2016 - Top Picks for Gaming and Performance how a quad core Intel isn't recommended until the high end, and the i3 is a solid mid range pick. Also note in the (slightly old but still relevant article) Best CPU For Gaming - 9 Processors And 8 Games Tested - HardwarePal how an i3-4130 consistently trumps even an FX-8350, again owing to it's huge IPC lead and games not utilizing multiple cores effectively (contrast this to XBONE and PS4 games which must use 8 1ghz cores very effectively). And it if you want to use Rise Of The Tomb Raider as an example, take a look at the following chart. See how performance between an i3-4360 and i5-4690K's average framerate is effectively the same (76fps vs 78fps, basically testing variance margins), even with a -much- higher end graphics card? Means there is no advantage to using a quad core i5 vs a dual core i3 in this game, again as in the case of many games. With the GTX 980 TI, 1920x1080 is much more of a CPU taxing resolution than GPU. But you can see how FPS scales well with graphics cards of increasing power Rise of the Tomb Raider PC Graphics and CPU Performance > Benchmarks: 1080p - TechSpot

Your CPU is a spit of a difference between the i3-4360, and it is quite capable of driving upper end graphics at the most popular gaming resolution. Your graphics card is INCAPABLE of pushing out higher frame rates due to a 1GB VRAM frame buffer, as well as being hamstring by a very cut down GPU core, so spend your money where it will make a difference, not where marketing tells you it will make a difference.

Your graphics card is extremely weak and not intended for 1920x1080 gaming, which is hampered even more by the 1GB VRAM which is wholly insufficient for gaming at that resolution. No amount of overclocking will result in a performance boost.

Yes, I understand that it isn't a powerhouse, but here in South Africa, an Rx480 which SHOULD be around 200 US dollars, but is the equivalent of $575! So really not in my budget at all. My dad's PC has an HD 7790 2GB OC which I plan on inheriting one day once he gets a new one. I can't wait for that day but for now i'm stuck with the 250x.

But the absolute WORST thing in my PC at the moment is not my GPU, not my CPU but my HDD. It's

soooo slow, 5400rpm SATA II and makes playing games like Rise of the Tomb Raider painful because of the loading times. My GPU is not that bad with other games and I can pretty much MAX any game from 2012 and below. Assassin's Creed works like a charm on here and not to forget the first Tomb Raider (2013).

You don't need an RX 480, an R9 280X is over 3x as powerful as your card and is perfect for 1920x1080. As for drives, yea 5400RPM is killing you and you could stand to buy an SSD, even the cheapest 128GB SSD will work fine for you, both of which can be found on ebay.

I used to have an SSD, and fast one at that too, but it sadly died along with all of my data on it.

Also, I was wondering if I should NOT get an i5, but instead get an AMD CPU Motherboard and a Quad - Core AMD CPU, is it worth it considering the HUGE price difference between i5's and Quad - Core AMD equivalents. I need a Quad - Core CPU soon to futureproof my PC or some newer games might not work on my i3.

Yea, the 7790 has twice the power of your 250, and is not VRAM bound. As far as AMD vs Intel goes, Intel does have higher performance currently, Zen will solve that problem when it releases next year, but will require Windows 10, same as all new Intel CPUs. The i3 isn't as bad as it seems, per core the i3 4150 is faster than the FX-8350, as Intel currently has a 40% IPC advantage. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-4150-vs-AMD-FX-8350

No, I am planning on replacing it, It's just a matter of time, the reason i'm replacing my i3 with an i5 is because that has 4 - cores and some games of today require quad core CPUs to run correctly, and I'd much rather turn the settings down than not play the game at all.

Not really, many games on the PC do not take advantage of multiple CPU cores effectively. Notice in Best CPUs of 2016 - Top Picks for Gaming and Performance how a quad core Intel isn't recommended until the high end, and the i3 is a solid mid range pick. Also note in the (slightly old but still relevant article) Best CPU For Gaming - 9 Processors And 8 Games Tested - HardwarePal how an i3-4130 consistently trumps even an FX-8350, again owing to it's huge IPC lead and games not utilizing multiple cores effectively (contrast this to XBONE and PS4 games which must use 8 1ghz cores very effectively). And it if you want to use Rise Of The Tomb Raider as an example, take a look at the following chart. See how performance between an i3-4360 and i5-4690K's average framerate is effectively the same (76fps vs 78fps, basically testing variance margins), even with a -much- higher end graphics card? Means there is no advantage to using a quad core i5 vs a dual core i3 in this game, again as in the case of many games. With the GTX 980 TI, 1920x1080 is much more of a CPU taxing resolution than GPU. But you can see how FPS scales well with graphics cards of increasing power Rise of the Tomb Raider PC Graphics and CPU Performance > Benchmarks: 1080p - TechSpot

Your CPU is a spit of a difference between the i3-4360, and it is quite capable of driving upper end graphics at the most popular gaming resolution. Your graphics card is INCAPABLE of pushing out higher frame rates due to a 1GB VRAM frame buffer, as well as being hamstring by a very cut down GPU core, so spend your money where it will make a difference, not where marketing tells you it will make a difference.

I understand what you are saying, but the reason I'm getting an i5 is not because I want higher performance now, just that in the future, some games will require a quad core, so I'm not left behind using some rushed dual - core version of the game, and my CPU is locked, so no overclocking. On the other hand, an i5 IS Overclockable, and my 250x will be replaced soon once my dad gets a new GPU. I'm not planning on playing many other AAA titles now, because I'm under 16 and most AAA titles are 18+. Another reason to get an i5, because once I'm over the age of 18, games WILL utilize 4 cores.

On a more positive note, this SSD rocks! The performance increased in most games by sometimes as much as 20%, loading times have been cut down, and booting Windows 10 used to take about 30 seconds, now it takes about 3! I'm not Joking!

Actually with DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs using fewer CPU resources vs DirectX 11 and OpenGL, properly coded games will not require an ultra fast CPU, and with IPC continuing to increase, and with AMD Zen launching in 2017 at CES in January with IPC parity with Skylake, there is no incentive for game developers to utilize multiple CPU cores just as there is little incentive for them to support multiple GPUs, but it's your money, spend it the way you want, just saying your priorities are reversed.

And as far as SSDs go, that's all I run in my system, a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO for OS and media, 256GB OCZ Vector for games, and 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 for page file and on system backups.

Yep, what country are you from? I'm guessing it's the US. But yeah, prices are terrible in the SA, we pay about 14 RAND (our currency) for 1 dollar, and to put that into perspective, a KitKat costs around 7 RAND.

USA. And that's actually better than here, regular size candy bars are 79¢ and set to go up again. But I'm happy with my system, FX-8350 @ 4.6ghz and a Fury Nano, can't wait for Zen next year and see how performance is on Windows 7, if it's not that bad I'm upgrading and finally eliminating a bad bottleneck.

Yeah, but every once in a while, the prices drop for a few days, then go up again, because when prices go up, they hire our financial minister to fix it, he works really hard, and fixes the issue, and then they fire him, rinse and repeat and it's been going on like this since 2011. But my dad got a real steal when he bought his 7790 for about the equivalent of $115 (Gigabyte 2GB GDDR5 OC), but since prices are getting worse, it now costs about $170! And it's four years old, still good, but not worth that!

But anyway, I'm going to put up my i3 4150 online for about $130, might sound expensive but buying one brand new costs $250! I know, expensive, but I found an i5 for $170, used, but it's really hard to find a Haswell CPU today for a good price.

Like I said before, I went to a gaming convention on Saturday, and saw a machine running one Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, Intel Core i7 (not sure what model, but a brand new KABY LAKE architecture), 16GB DDR4 2333Mhz. It was running, guess what... Rise of the Tomb Raider, however, the guy from MSI left the settings on the stock ones at 1080p, 60fps. So I looked around to see if anyone was watching, and MAXED it! The graphics were incredible, better than what I've ever seen before, because of how much 1GB of VRAM restricts you.

I did some research on your FX-8350, and it has EIGHT - cores! Nice, but it also saw the size, 32nm, now I understand what you mean, but I shouldn't be talking, because soon, my 22nm Die is going to be outdated, because the newer Skylake and Kabylake CPUs have 14nm Dies', but I ran a test on CPUBOSS to see what your CPU can do against mine, and (obviously yours won) but there are some places where mine is better, here you can look for yourself:

That, and because the GTX 1060 is to your R7 250X what Porche is to the Volkswagen Beetle, it's 300-500% faster. And yes the FX-8350 has 8 cores which makes it great at programs which efficiently multithread, it's really no better than your i3 in games due to Intel's 40% IPC advantage, which will not be fixed until Zen launches at CES in January. I know the CPU is a huge bottleneck in games now as I play at the CPU limited resolution of 1920x1200 (or 2560x1600 3840x2400 in some games via VSR) and I have a much stronger GPU than I did when I bought my FX-8350 in 2013 (Fury Nano vs HD 7970 Ghz, 2x as powerful). Die size relates more to power and cost, as Kaby Lake is a die shrink yet only bringing "up to 10%" more performance than Skylake, which is pretty ho hum since Skylake is already plenty powerful enough for the vast majority of the market.

I was just thinking, even if I got a 1060 or an R9 Fury, I don't think my PSU will be able to supply enough power to run those cards properly. I have a Corsair VS450 (450w)But cards like the Rx480 are way better balanced and can use 90w even under heavy load.

Good news is that my dad is planning on getting an Rx470 4GB for his PC, so I'll inherit that 7790 of his soon.

Also, do you have a 4k display? Just asking because you said that you run games at 3840xBLAH and I distinguished that 3840 is 4k, Aleast the Horizontal axis.

Speaking of resolutions, don't you think that 1080p is really the diminishing point for resolutions, and that 4k is a waste of VRAM and money, because 1080p is ULTRA clear and from where I'm sitting, 4k would look pretty much the same.It's like giving your PC 64GB of DDR4 when all you'll ever use is 16GB. They should just stop trying to up the pixels and should instead work on implementing OLED, and Retina, and HDR into all 1080p monitors. The image quality would actually be sharper and black levels would make other colors pop. Why I say Retina is because my iPhone 4 (yes 2010) has a retina display that is at a resolution of 960x640, but since it's a retina display, the pixels are packed closely together and has a higher PPI than some 1080p (non retina) phones do.

Also, I went to my Radeon Settings, and saw the GPU does not support (Obviously) VSR, also what's GPU Scaling, should I turn it on, or leave it off?

No, it's 16:10, it's slightly more square which allows things to not look as compressed as they are on a 1920x1080 display. My current monitor is the HP ZR2440w. As far as 4K goes, the answer is NO. Professional photo and video editors work with 4K and higher resolutions, so having displays which have that natively is a big advantage. Also on larger displays, such as televisions, the difference in picture quality is quite noticeable as you have a much larger display area and now have 4x the pixels to enhance definition, the difference between a FHD and UHD television is like night and day, even if the source is 1080p as it's a simple multiplier upscale.

GPU scaling is an option to allow the GPU to scale non native resolutions if your monitor does not have the options. Many lower end monitors will not allow you to set "maintain aspect ratio" or "use centered timings", so using GPU scaling will allow that.

After doing some research, I found out that my Intel Core i3 is far more powerful than an AMD Jaguar found in the Xbox One and PS4. So if I get a better GPU then my ENTIRE PC will more powerful than those Consoles.

Also, all this time I should of mentioned that I used to have an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT (512 MB GDDR3) all the way up until last year, so my "Weak GPU" is quite a lot more powerful than my last GPU.

Looking at the way prices are here the RX 470 and RX 460 are the best choices. There's even better news along that front as well: AMD Radeon RX 470 Reportedly Dropping To $169 To Compete With Incoming GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | HotHardware The RX 470 is a solid midrange card, packing the power of the 380X with about half the power draw. The RX 460 is more of an entry level card, though it has the grunt for casual games and "older" games at high resolutions and detail levels. If prices are more favorable down there, the 380X. Looking at 3x the power of your 250X for the 380X and RX 470, but you're not RAM bound.

Wow, I hope shipping isn't too expensive because buying locally is very expensive, RX 470 4GB current price at $260, it should be cheaper soon but probably not by much. The SKETCHY market isn't as bad, if you look here:

RX 470: $243

But I'd rather wait until the price drop then grab a card that is listed as NEW but probably has something wrong with it.

The RX 460 is Polaris 11 architecture, the same chips which are built for notebooks, having R7 370 power while having half the TDP, and is a great chip for people who don't play modern graphically intense games as it is efficient, quiet, inexpensive, and powerful enough for HTPC tasks such as UHD video processing, as well as not very graphically intense games such as MMOs and "golden oldies" like FEAR, STALKER, and Far Cry 1-3.

With the 1050 and 1050 Ti, it's forced the board partners to stop gouging on prices. The MSI Gaming RX 480 4GB can be had for $200 after $20 rebate, which is exactly the same price as the MSI Gaming RX 470 4GB (though the RX 470 also has a $15 rebate making it $185, but there's no reason in the world to consider it against the RX 480). This puts it at the same price as the much slower 1050 Ti.

The cheapest 4GB Rx 480 is $290, and the cheapest 8GB Rx 480 is $350, I looked at how much people were selling their 250x's for, and a brand new 250x (The exact same vendor (MSI) and model as mine) was being sold for $135, so I might sell mine for $100, because for $35 in SA, you could buy the equivalent of 83 KitKats!

It's set to fullscreen so It stretches the image, and doesn't look too bad. At least my 250x is a lot better than my old card, which was an Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB GDDR3. Considering my card's FLOP is 806 GFLOPS and my old 9600 GT's FLOP was a little over 200 GFLOPS, I was happy to get it.

Not bad at all. The 2GB VRAM will hold you back a bit at higher resolutions in -some- games, but even in Battlefield 3 it can push over 60fps at 1920x1080. Read the full review here AMD Radeon R9 270X 2 GB Review | techPowerUp

It is refurbished, but that could mean a wide range of things. It sounds too good to be true, but since there is buyer protection, I would get it and really hammer the heck out of it for the first week with games and stress tests, and you can always part out your old system to mitigate the costs.

Yeah, and I also forgot to mention that people overprice i3 CPUs here in S.A, and go for sometimes $250! This is very good news as I can sell my i3, 8GB DDR3 and MOBO combo for around $210 to $260 without problems. As for my 250x, It goes for $100 used so I'll sell it for that.

I just looked at the listing again and it is now going for R7899 which is another $70 off! I guess the person is desperate to sell it and when it got a few views today (from me from different PCs), he/she thought that people were looking at it thinking it was too expensive so she dropped another R1000

Also, 2GB of VRAM plenty for me, because I don't think I will be getting a 1440p or 4k monitor any time soon, and VSR is cool but 1080p is good enough. Also, by looking at my two favorite games which are Skyrim and Fallout 4, they don't need 4GB or above.

I bought an 1800X and ASUS X370 Prime, but I returned it after Microsoft banned all Ryzen and Kaby Lake users from receiving updates unless they are using Windows 10, and I'm not using Windows 10 until updates are made optional and advertising is removed from the system kernel.

I sold my R7 250X and picked a MSI 1060 3GB! It was the only one left in stock on Rebeltech (basically the newegg for South Africa), and I got it for $230 USD, which is great considering the fact that all of these cards(RX570/80, GTX1060 3/6GB) are really expensive because of cryptocurrency mining.